In August 2024, the Surgeon General issued a warning around the state of working parents in the US,” explained Sarah Olin. “Their research found that 41% of parents and caregivers report being so stressed and overwhelmed that they can’t function.” Olin shared this information in a recent Connex Fireside Chat that examined how employers can better support working parents and caregivers. It was a key moment of contextualizing clarity, delivered by an individual who intimately understands the challenges of working parents.
Olin is the CEO of LUMO, a professional development company specializing in supporting employees through the transitions necessitated by parenthood. She and her organization are at the forefront of an all-too-small industry hoping to change the working caregiver status quo. Their core thesis posits that caregiver-related events – such as parental leave – can be used as levers to promote individual and organizational success. By supporting caregivers and their teams before, during, and after these events, employers can dramatically improve staff retention, performance, and quality of life, maximizing outcomes for all involved while simultaneously having a dramatically positive impact on families.
Early in the company’s history, LUMO cofounder Anna Conathan coined the phrase “trickle-down Momenomics” to describe the ethos behind their work. “Trickle-down Momenomics,” clarified Olin, “is one of the few times the trickle-down economic theory works. When you take care of mothers and give them resources, support, money, and care, it directly has an impact on their families, their communities, and their businesses.” Paired with the recent Surgeon General’s findings, it’s not hard to see why LUMO champions the cause they do.
For HR and business leaders, the need for better caregiver support is more than just a public health concern. It’s a clear-cut financial imperative. Without deliberate, strategic support, organizations risk mounting turnover, eroded productivity, and disengaged teams, all at a time when recessionary projections already threaten business stability. Organizations that make these investments in their employees gain powerful strategic advantages, resulting in as much as a 5.5x greater level of revenue growth than their less generous peers. Thankfully, insights from Connex Community members, our market research, and luminaries like Olin all suggest there are plenty of ways to get started.
Expanding & Enhancing Leave
Arguably the bedrock of it all, it’s vital that employers expand and enhance their paid parental leave policies. “We’re one of the few nations without paid parental leave at the national level,” explained fellow LUMO cofounder and Fireside speaker Elena Arecco Bridgmon. “More than 20% of American mothers return to work within 2 weeks of childbirth, and that’s insane for anyone who’s a parent.”
Bridgmon went on to note that some enterprising employers have expanded parental leave to as much as 6 months, but as with any employee benefit, even that length of time is insufficient if access is uneven or confusing. Leave policies must be reviewed to ensure they are equitable, readily available, and easily understandable. Furthermore, the details of those policies need to be consistently and meaningfully communicated – employees experiencing major, stressful life transitions sometimes need to hear in no uncertain terms that their careers and livelihoods aren’t at risk of penalty. By crafting and signal boosting transparent leave policies, HR leaders can drive leave utilization, combat unhelpful stigmas, and make caregiver empowerment a valued cultural pillar.
Easing Transitions
The moment a parent returns from leave holds both significant promise and risk. Without thoughtful reintegration and support for their new lifestyle pressures, employees may feel alienated, overwhelmed, or uncertain about their place on the team. This can then bleed into feelings of concern that what the parent can bring to the table is no longer needed. At the other end of the relationship, managers and team members who haven’t been properly supported throughout the process may harbor conflicted feelings. However, avoiding these pitfalls by creating a positive, supportive, and productive experience for everyone involved can inspire long-lasting loyalty and commitment. This dichotomy is at the heart of why LUMO refers to the new parent experience as a “love them or leave them” moment for employees.
“There are many things an organization can do inside of their four walls to support [parents],” explained Bridgmon. “Supporting childcare is a big one,” she continued, “whether that be stipends or providing actual on-site childcare. […] Another is providing a sense of community. We’ve seen a lot of our clients create affinity groups and employee networks that provide training, informal mentoring, and peer support to caregivers.”
Other crucial options focus on schedule flexibility. The realities of caregiving can make it difficult to conform to traditional 9-to-5, full-time, and on-site arrangements. Hybrid models, compressed schedules, staggered start and end times, personalized schedules, and easing attendance expectations to just the business’s “core hours” of operation can all help.
During the return to work itself, this flexibility might manifest as a phased reintroduction process. Here, employers would use part-time schedules, reduced workloads, and remote arrangements to give caregivers the on-ramp they need to ease back into their positions. This can even be combined with mentor-like pairings, providing employees with a clear point of contact for any concerns, needs, or requests.
The Role of Leaders
It’s worth noting that if there’s an Achilles’ heel to these policies, it’s the managers who facilitate them. More specifically, a manager’s unwillingness to empathize with the challenges of caregiving and shift their behaviors, performance expectations, and communication strategies accordingly. Supervisors may lack the confidence needed to navigate flexible schedules and sensitive employee conversations. They may lack a true understanding of how challenging being a caregiver can be. Or they may even be reeling from a perceived loss of control.
“I think it helps when companies give their managers training and empower them to work with [caregiving] employees around what they need,” said Bridgmon. That can be paired, Bridgmon argued, with training on “how to be empathetic and how to make it a ‘moment that matters’ when an employee comes to them and says they need to take leave.”
“We want to support the employee going out on leave, of course, but we want to scale up those managers, too,” added Olin, “because they really are the first line of defense.” She continued: “One of the things that makes LUMO’s work so successful for organizations is that we see it as not just parent and caregiver coaching. It’s really leadership development. [We apply] the tools, mindset shifts, and applications of coaching to develop both [managers and caregivers] as leaders. That helps them be successful in what’s otherwise a fraught, challenging transition.”
Taking Action
The Surgeon General’s advisory in August of 2024 raised a long-overdue alarm: caregivers of all kinds need more support from their employers to bring their full, productive selves to work. Inclusive leave policies, flexible work models, childcare support, and staff development resources aren’t just “nice” things to do – they’re critical tools for building resilient, high-functioning teams.
Caregiving employees who are supported before, after, and throughout their biggest life transitions are likely to pay that kindness forward. They contribute more to their teams, grow into stronger leaders, and are more likely to persevere through volatile market conditions. As a result, organizations that rise to the challenge are well-positioned to succeed in today’s increasingly competitive labor market. After all, few benefits are more meaningful to caregiving employees than attempts to ease the dual burdens they face.
By building a workplace that supports caregivers, you build an environment where everyone can thrive.
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